


and the future hangs over our heads

by thermodynamicActivity (chlorinetrifluoride)



Series: The Collegestuck 'Verse [41]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Bipolar Disorder, F/M, Humanstuck, Mental Breakdown, Psychosis, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-16
Updated: 2017-01-16
Packaged: 2018-09-18 00:06:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9352508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chlorinetrifluoride/pseuds/thermodynamicActivity
Summary: Your name is Sollux Captor, and you got out of the psych ward two weeks ago. You spend most of your time struggling to sleep, battling mood swings, lashing out at your suitemates, and wishing you could take back the last five weeks of your life. And then there's Aradia, one of your universal constants. She calms you down, however fleetingly. She listens. And you are glad to have her.You're glad to have everyone, honestly, even as guilty as you feel for putting them through this and more besides.





	

**Author's Note:**

> sort of a sister work to "i will read all their dreams to the stars"

Your name is Sollux Captor, you are a sophomore in college, and you live in a suite with six other morons. 

Technically, it should be five other morons. This is a six man suite, containing three bedrooms, a common room, a kitchen, and a bathroom. However, one of your on and off fuckbuddies has pretty much moved in and made her ass a permanent fixture on the common room couch. She only really goes back to her actual dorm room to pick up her medication and to assure her roommate - her sister - that she is still alive. Otherwise, she's here, hanging out with Gamzee and Eridan, who are two of her closest friends. Whatever.

Then, there are the people who are actually supposed to live in your suite. Your roommate, Karkat, is someone you’ve known since you were a kid. You’ve also thought he was annoying as hell since you were a kid. He’s a psychology major, and he acts like your mother, particularly now.

You recently tried to overdose on Seroquel, as per the instructions from the voices in your head, and ever since you got discharged from the psych ward, he’s usually been the one administering your medication. Him or one of your other suitemates, save Gamzee, who can barely administer his own meds without fucking up.

You apparently cannot be trusted to perform such a basic task. Even though it’s been five weeks since you overdosed.

The doctors in psych insisted to you that you were suicidal, and that’s why you overdosed. In actuality, you had been awake for five days, and were trying to sleep for two or three days. You only took fifteen pills. Hardly a decent attempt at putting an end to your life.

Besides, if you’d been suicidal, you would have overdosed on something deadlier. You’re even on more dangerous meds than the 400 mg Seroquel pills you took.

The doctors didn’t seem to understand your logic, though. Or if they did, they dismissed it as the ravings of a voice-hearing crazy dude. The fact that you were groggy, shaking, and hallucinating when you explained yourself probably didn’t do anything to help that. Add that to your suitemates’ reports that you were agitated and severely depressed in turns before your hospitalization, and the fact that you have a history of attempting suicide by overdose, and everyone thinks you were trying to die.

You weren’t. You hate yourself, and you’re definitely depressed, but not enough to kill yourself. It wouldn’t help anything, anyway. It would just hurt the people who care about you.

Only Aradia, Eridan, and Roxy seem to believe that, and even the latter two have their skepticism about your explanation.

So, as always, AA knows you best.

She came to visit you every day, the same way she did every single time you’ve ended up in the psych ward. You’ve racked up an impressive number of visits over the last few years.

Karkat has left your morning meds on your computer desk, along with a grilled cheese sandwich, which he somehow managed to burn, and a note reading “get to class you fucking dipshit”. You’re surprised he’s not sitting on his bed to watch you take them, and then you realize he probably went to class.

You count out the pills to make sure he didn’t fuck anything up. You’re on like seven medications including your night ones, you’d actually be more surprised if he didn’t fuck something up. So you look them all over. Ativan, 1 mg. Check. Seroquel, 25 mg. Check. Eskalith, 600 mg. Yes, he’s put out two of the 300 mg ones. 

That’s all of them. You dry swallow the four pills, take an experimental bite of your sandwich, and try to recall your class schedule. You really hate lithium. It fogs up your mind and doesn’t even do much to slow down your thoughts.

Today, you have Software Analysis and Design, along with Matrix Algebra. You’d have more classes, but you withdrew from one after you got out of the hospital. There’s no way you would have aced it after missing the midterm and several days of class besides - you were hospitalized for 22 days. And you need top grades for graduate school. You could have probably pulled a B out of your ass, but you are Sollux motherfucking Captor, and you do not do grades below A. Even an A- would have been borderline unacceptable.

You wonder if you’ll still be able to graduate in 2015. You hate yourself for not knowing anymore. You want to bang your head against the wall repeatedly. You wish you felt less shitty. You wish your meds were working.

And you miss the old mania you used to have in high school. You flew, but you still managed to get four hours of sleep a night without heavy sedation. And sure, you’d be a little more reckless, a little more on edge, but you were in a state where you could get everything done you needed done and then some. You could still focus. You weren’t moving so fast that you couldn’t read your textbooks because your mind kept jumping around. Hell, you had all these insights that no one else had, not even Roxy Lalonde, your arch-rival.

You weren’t manic, you were perfect. You were a coding god, a veritable goldmine of programs, and you still had time to walk Aradia to and from her classes, and to trade jibes with Karkat.

Besides, you felt great.

Mituna warned you, but you hadn’t wanted to listen. Okay, yeah, you’d had a bad depressive episode in junior year and tried to do a dangerous thing. But this wasn’t like that. You didn’t want to die because you hated yourself. In fact, you thought you were awesome.

The voices hadn’t started in yet, or if they did, they were a whisper you dismissed as being the results of a tad too much caffeine, not like you even needed caffeine at that point. Even though your mother hears voices. Even though Mituna hears voices. You figured that would never be you.

Then college hit, something happened, and you flew clear through the upper limit of your previous ecstasy. You were either angry at everyone for being concerned about you or you were so elated that you couldn’t stop moving if you wanted to. Two, four, six days without sleep. Doing drugs with Eridan. Sleeping with people whose names you’ve forgotten. You found any and every party on campus.

But, at some point you started hear the voices. They wouldn’t go away, and they didn’t feel like an intrusion. They felt like a part of you. Therefore, they became realer to you than the people you lived with. You believed every word the hallucinations said.

So you thought all your suitemates were trying to poison you. You stopped eating the food in the fridge. Even the food in the dining halls was full of lethal substances that would liquefy your insides. When Calliope called Mituna, who offered to come get you, you just knew they were planning to kill you. Mituna and Porrim tried to talk you down, and offered to pick you up once more, but by then you had become incapable of listening.

You cursed Porrim out with particular hatred, and told her to stop interfering, because you already knew she wanted you dead.

“I don’t think anyone wants you dead.”

Finally, you got into a physical altercation with Eridan that ended in Gamzee restraining you. 

“Listen up, Solbro,” he said. “You need to up and get your motherfuckin’ chill on. Nobody’s gonna hurt you. Nothin’ but fuckin’ friends here.”

You socked him in the mouth, and moved forward to successfully sweep Karkat’s legs from underneath him. Dave stayed stock still, backed up against the wall, determined to make himself as small as possible.

That’s when Roxy called 911. You tried to fight her, too, but she managed to dodge. You tried to fight everyone. You broke so many things. You wouldn’t let the medics take you away so they could experiment on you.

You banned Aradia from visiting you, even though she wanted to, because she had been part of the plot to get you taken away. You would never forgive her for that.

You’re not sure how long you spent hospitalized.

The antipsychotics started to work, though. And when they did, you realized the sheer extent of the damage you’d done. You’re still apologizing for that episode, at least you feel like you are. Everyone assures you that they understand you weren’t in your right mind, but now when they look at you, there’s a bit more fear behind their eyes. As if you could revert to that state at any time.

That was when the high stopped being fun, and became something even more horrifying than the low. Clinically depressed, you wanted only to harm yourself. Fully manic, and you wanted to harm others, but only in self-defense. Delusional self-defense.

You glance at your treatment plan, reading the diagnosis printed on it.

_Bipolar disorder, current episode mixed, severe, with psychotic features._

At least you didn’t try to fight anyone this time around. At least the only person you tried to hurt - however accidentally - was yourself. You hurt other people when you hurt yourself, though. That’s the problem. You wish you knew how to stop.

Your phone vibrates. You pick it up.

AA: i was just texting y0u t0 make sure y0u were awake f0r class.  
TA: ii am.  
AA: did y0u sleep at all last night?  
TA: yeah, 2orta.  
AA: h0w many h0urs is that exactly?  
TA: enough.  
AA: en0ugh is n0t a number, s0llux.  
TA: liike three hour2, four hour2, who even giive2 a fuckiing 2hit.

Then, you feel guilty for snapping at her. You put her through a lot without adding more of that to the table.

TA: ii diidnt mean two be rude two you. iim just fru2trated.  
AA: ab0ut what?

You are frustrated about pretty much everything, actually.

TA: ii cant 2leep for more than four hour2  
TA: 2tiill heariing voiice2  
TA: 2tiill haviing 2ome paranoiid thought2  
TA: ii had two wiithdraw from CSCI 310 whiich mean2 ii have probably fucked up my chance2 of graduatiing on tiime.  
TA: ii have two 2ee the2e doctor2 three tiime2 a week.  
TA: my med2 are barely workiing, and ii thiink they have me on the max do2e of liithiium.  
TA: 2o iim wonderiing what they’re goiing two do after that, and ii dont fuckiing know.  
TA: ii dont know anythiing and iit2 driiviing me iin2ane.  
TA: and now ii have the miigraiine of liife and ii dont even thiink ii want two go two cla22 anymore.

You could just lie in bed until you finally manage to adhere to your sheets. What’s the point in going to these classes? You’re just going to have another episode and fuck them up.

But Aradia’s messaged you again.

AA: well, i have an idea.  
TA: you do?  
AA: what time is y0ur first class?

Your gaze flicks to the clock on your phone.

TA: three hour2 from now.  
AA: really? i th0ught it was at 10:10.  
TA: AA, that wa2 the cla22 ii dropped.  
AA: i see.  
AA: s0 why d0nt i c0me 0ver and we can g0 f0r a drive?  
TA: ii dont know iif iim up for that.  
AA: it might make y0u feel better.  
AA: i will make y0u s0me 0f that tea y0u like t00.

If you don’t agree to this, she’ll just drive over to your building and insist in her own soft way, on staying with you anyway. You kind of love her for it.

TA: fiine.

You’re still being rude to her, Sollux.

TA: thank you.  
TA: iit mean2 a lot two me.  
AA: n0 pr0blem 0u0  
AA: i’ll call y0u when i’m 0utside.  
TA: don’t you have a 10:15 cla22 though?  
AA: i have the highest grade in the entire divisi0n  
AA: i can skip a lecture every s0 0ften  
TA: riight

When you get in her car, you’ll chide her for that. How she shouldn’t put her grades in jeopardy over you of all people. She is, objectively, more than you will ever deserve. But she’ll insist otherwise, the way she always does, the way she has since seventh grade.

You cross over to your dresser and dig clean clothes out of it, trying to ignore your headache. You get dressed and eat your godawful grilled cheese sandwich. You continue to have problems believing that Porrim taught Karkat how to cook before he left for college, because Karkat was a terrible cook in high school, and he’s a terrible cook now.

Once you’re dressed, you walk into the common room. Dave is in the shower, judging from the amount of singing coming from the bathroom. Fuck, you didn’t know Britney Spears was still putting out music until today. 

If he’s not done in two minutes, you’re going to shout at him to turn it down.

Eridan and Gamzee are probably still asleep. Neither of them have morning classes. You have no idea where John is, and you don’t particularly care. 

Roxy sits on the sofa - her domain - laptop on her lap, finishing her assignment for CSCI 310. The noise of her fingers moving across the keyboard sounds like jackhammers in your skull. She looks up from her computer and smiles at you.

“Morning, lispy!” she says cheerily. You scowl back at her.

She gets a better look at you and sets her laptop aside. She walks over to you, smelling faintly of wine. She’s going to keep going to that class tipsy and get an A, while you are going to be stuck taking it again at some later point.

“Hey, uh, you okay man?” she asks.

You shake your head. “Evidently not,” you say through gritted teeth.

“What’s wrong?”

You slide to a sitting position on the floor, screwing your eyes shut momentarily. It does not help. You open them again.

“My head.”

She nods, understanding.

Roxy goes back to the sofa and digs a set of keys out from between two of the cushions. You recognize them as a set of keys for the lockbox where Karkat keeps all your medications. It’s such an idiotic fail-safe against the possibility of you trying anything stupid. Eridan and Gamzee are both on medication, and they keep the bottles in their room. If you wanted to do anything - which you don’t, for the record - you could just wait for both of them to leave and steal their drugs.

Assuming you could find anything in that room. Gamzee has elevated being disorganized into an art form.

Roxy sets the box down on the table in the common room, undoes the lock, and starts rummaging through the box.

“Which one is the one for your migraines?” she asks. 

You can already tell by the careful, methodical way she goes through each bottle, that this is going to take ten thousand years. You don’t have ten thousand years. You don’t have any patience for this shit.

You push her aside and go through the box yourself.

“It’s called Fioricet, for future reference,” you tell her.

You show her the bottle. 

She snatches it from you and reads the instructions.

“Okay, you can get one of these like… every four hours,” she says.

You roll your eyes.

“No shit.”

She hands you a pill, closes the bottle, puts it back in the box, and locks it again. Then she puts the keys in her pocket.

Your suitemates are your jailers. Fan-fucking-tastic.

This is what happens when you listen to the voices in your head, Sollux. You call these people morons, but you’re the biggest moron of all. Maybe if you’d said something sooner, you wouldn’t have spent three weeks in the fucking loony bin.

Still, at least Roxy gets with the program when you tell her that you need something. Eridan would have probably made you wait until the heat death of the universe, or until he finished gelling his hair, whichever came first.

You go back to your room, switch off the lights, pull the curtains shut and wait for Aradia to contact you.

Half an hour later, your phone buzzes again.

AA: im 0utside.  
TA: got iit.

You put on your hoodie and pull the hood over your head. You walk out of your room, and Roxy is nowhere to be found. In her place sits Dave, who is eating cereal. Your cereal. You inhale slowly, resist the urge to curse at him, and finally leave your suite.

There’s a red Volkswagen parked a few feet from the entrance to your building. You open the front passenger door, and slide into the seat wordlessly.

“Morning, Sollux,” Aradia says.

You grunt some kind of response. You don’t have words yet. You will, at some point.

She hands you a thermos full of tea, which you drink from. You like it. It makes your head hurt less. It might even calm you down if you were capable of being something other than agitated, anxious, depressed, and generally miserable.

You gaze at Aradia. As always, she is beautiful.

Her hijab has been pinned carefully into place. She’s wearing her usual red jacket, and one of her thousand and one gray skirts. Once, you thought she was like you, and wore the same thing a million times before washing it. Then you saw her closet. It wasn’t the one skirt she wore every day, she just had ten identical gray skirts.

She’s even still wearing the beaded bracelet you made her while you were hospitalized. One day on the inpatient unit, one of the therapists had you and the other prisoners make bracelets out of beads and elastic, as if you were in summer camp, as opposed to locked in the loony bin. When Aradia came to visit, you gave it to her.

It’s hideous, but she’s wearing it. You actually crack a smile.

You wish you could stay still, but you can’t. Your leg won’t stop shaking. You have no outlet for your anxious energy besides shaking.

“So, Sollux, what’s going on today?” she asks gently.

You shrug.

“I’m just pissed off, like always,” you reply.

“You are not always pissed off, Sollux.”

She would know, you suppose.

“Well, I’m pissed off now,” you say. “I pretty much already told you why.”

Aradia nods. She takes a sip of her own tea, leaning back in her seat.

“You’re angry about a lot of things, but they’re things you can’t exactly change.”

“Fucking tell me about it.” 

You put your cup of tea in one of her drink holders.

“Getting angry about things you can’t change is only going to make you angrier, you know,” she continues. “I know you know that. When you get like this, this always happens.”

“Maybe I just really want to be angry,” you tell her. “I’ve got these thoughts and they won’t let me sleep, and these voices, and they’re so loud, and my suitemates are all a bunch of fucking assholes, but so am I, so what should I expect? I hate this.”

“I know, Sollux.”

You give voice to the thought in the back of your head.

“I hate myself.”

“I know that, too. You shouldn’t, though. Or at least, try not to.”

“Oh?”

Aradia gives you a smile. 

“Because you don’t deserve any of that. And it’s okay to be angry, but you shouldn’t live there.”

“I don’t know how else to be right now,” you confess.

“That’s because they’re still adjusting your medication,” she says, and she makes your emotions sound so rational.

She reaches over to touch your face. You hold her hand there, even as your own hand shakes.

“I’m, like… _fuck_.” you start out, and your eyes burn dangerously, like you might cry. You know she won’t judge you, but you, _you’ll_ judge you. “I’m scared.”

“Of what?”

“What if they don’t find the right meds?” you want to know. “They’ve been doing, and changing, and adjusting, and re-adjusting this stuff since I was thirteen. They haven’t found the right combination yet. What if I’m like this forever?”

“That’s a valid reason to be afraid,” Aradia says. “But, you have to remember that you just got out of the hospital. Are you ever completely balanced right after you get out of the hospital?”

“I’m never completely balanced,” you say, dryly.

“Well, are you ever as balanced as you’re going to get, only two weeks after you get out of the hospital?”

“No,” you admit. “But what if this gets worse? What if I can’t finish college?”

“You are generally very brilliant, Sollux,” she says, her eyes never leaving yours. “And you are also very brilliant at coming up with worst case scenarios. You had a setback. You ended up in the hospital. You had to drop a class. You didn’t even _have_ to drop the class, you just didn’t want the B on your transcript. And you’re doing fine in your other classes.”

How does she always know the way you think? You know you didn’t tell her the reason that you dropped CSCI 310, but here she is, figuring it out anyway.

“Okay, but, like, what if?”

Aradia smiles as if she’d like to laugh, but won’t. You feel defensive now. What was so funny about your statement?

“Sollux,” she says. “How many times have you asked _“what if”_ about a situation that never ended up coming to pass?”

“A lot.”

“Even if you couldn’t finish college early, or on time, or the way you wanted to, you’d still always be able to finish. And let me reiterate. You dropped one class. I know it must seem like the end of the world, but it really isn’t.”

One of the many reasons you love Aradia is because she is one of the few people who can get you to stop catastrophizing for more than five minutes. At least until you find something new to catastrophize about.

“I have to see the doctors today, over at the medical center, after Software Analysis,” you inform her.

“You told me that last night. Remember?”

Right. Last night you were in her room, a single, thank God, watching Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom for like the millionth time. The both of you sat on her bed, wearing nothing but your underwear, with a bowl of popcorn between you. You only left her room that night because your medications were back with Karkat.

“Oh,” you say. “Right. But I’m scared they’re going to decide to re-admit me.”

“Why would they do that?” Aradia asks.

“Cause, I mean, in case you haven’t noticed, I’m not exactly making that much progress. I can’t sleep enough. I’m still hallucinating. I’m swinging between anger and depression, and it’s not stopping.”

Aradia steeples her fingers together, and thinks for a moment.

“Are you a danger to yourself or anyone else?”

“I’ll be a danger to someone else if Dave doesn’t stop eating my Lucky Charms.”

Aradia snorts.

“Are you actually a danger to yourself or anyone else?”

You mull it over for half a minute or so.

“I don’t think so.”

“Then they’re probably not going to hospitalize you.”

“What if they decide they want to keep me for observation or something?”

“Do you honestly think they will? You know more about this than I do,” she admits.

“Probably not,” you figure, after some thought. “It’d be a waste of a bed.”

Aradia notices you shivering and turns up the heat in her car. You should have put on something more substantial than a hoodie.

“Do you want me to come with you?” she asks. “To the medical center?”

“I don’t want to make you miss more class,” you reply.

“My grades are immaculate, I’ll have you know.”

“You don’t have to.”

“What if I want to?” she asks with a tiny little smile. “Didn’t consider that one, did you?”

You did not.

One day, you’ll do something to deserve her.

Maybe. 

“I guess not. Thank you,” you reply.

Another smile. You contemplate some more.

Meanwhile, Aradia drives around the area surrounding your college campus, bound for no destination in particular. She just meanders along, down streets and avenues, perfectly willing to be silent if you don’t want to talk. 

The voices warn you about her, warn you that if she goes with you to the medical center, it’ll be to make sure they lock you up again. She hates you. She must hate you. You’ve put her through so much. 

But she doesn’t want you locked up, otherwise she probably wouldn’t have invited you over yesterday.

_(What if it was just to observe you?)_

And even if she did want you to be hospitalized again, it would be for your own safety. Only for your own safety.

_(Do you believe that, Sollux? How **can** you believe that?)_

The voices have a pull and sway all their own, but like Mituna before you, you’re starting to figure out how to reality-test your way out of the paranoia they evoke.

They can speak, but you don’t have to listen.

Words from freshman year float up to you.

_“Listen up, Solbro, you need to up and get your motherfuckin’ chill on. Nobody’s gonna hurt you. Nothin’ but fuckin’ friends here.”_

“Aradia?” you ask.

She pulls the car over by a field. Nothing’s really begun to grow there yet, it’s too early in the year, but it’s quiet. Serene.

“I love you,” you tell her.

“Why, I know that. I love you too.”

She turns, and kisses you on the mouth.

You’re not okay. You’re not going to be okay for a while. But you have Aradia, and she has you, and that has to count for something.

You can let people in, and they probably won't leave.

You think of how you might spend your afternoon after you get back from class, and figure that maybe you'll talk to Karkat. You should talk to him, and thank him. Maybe he can't help with all your problems, but he's still one of your best friends, as much as neither of you would admit it unless held at gunpoint.

Slowly, you calm yourself down. You take Aradia's hand again.


End file.
